I'm not the world's biggest comics fanboy. I have a respectable collection of graphic novels, enjoyed the X-Men arcade game back in its heyday, and still have a few Batman toys from when I was a kid, but I'm only casually interested in comics. I am, however, a big fan of continuity. When books and games and movies sow seeds for future plotlines and make references to previous events, I am a happy camper. Fictional universes seem larger than they really are when nothing happens in a vacuum, and it's rewarding for diehard fans to notice little details that everyone else might overlook. That's why I got hooked on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), despite having only a mild passion for superhero stories.

Iron Man, at the time, was a cool-looking action movie that happened to be based on a comic I'd never read. The film was funny, engaging, and explosive enough to convince me to sit through The Incredible Hulk, which was rumored to connect with Iron Man somehow, despite my complete lack of desire to see what I (more or less accurately) predicted would be 90 minutes or so of either a green guy punching things or a wimpy guy not punching things. I looked forward to Iron Man 2, which cemented my interest in this Avengers movie that these new Marvel films were working toward. Fantasy and mythology generally aren't my cup of tea (or mug of ale, as it were), so Thor was a strictly perfunctory viewing that left me no more excited about the character and his world than before. Captain America was the last obligatory piece of the puzzle; WWII is an interesting time period but overdone in the entertainment world, and Cap fell into the "mostly just punches guys" category of superhero that doesn't usually interest me. Fortunately, the film exceeded my expectations and got me genuinely invested in its characters. So that was two Avengers out of four to get me psyched for the team-up movie.

The first half of The Avengers is everything I'm tired of seeing in movies: origin stories (in the form of assembling the team), heroes spending more time fighting each other than the villains, and mind control making the good guys either ineffective or subservient to the bad guys. The second half is everything I want out of an action movie: eye-popping visual spectacle, great one-liners, and heroes being awesome. I was more excited than ever to see the continuing adventures of Tony Stark in Iron Man 3, but Thor 2 still couldn't get me to care about the Norse god of gratuitous shirtlessness. Captain America had proven himself worthy of my interest (I say that like it means anything), so I was curious to seeWinter Soldier. Guardians of the Galaxy probably would've had my money regardless of its affiliation with the MCU, because I've never been one to turn down comedy and action in space. Phase 2 of this huge film endeavor was in full swing, and with the connections getting stronger and the movies looking more up my alley, I was officially hooked.

To gear up for Avengers: Age of Ultron, my wife and I started getting caught up on the MCU TV series, starting with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Everyone loves Agent Phil "Everyone's Favorite Character" Coulson, but I had trouble connecting with the other characters at first. I quickly warmed up to the show as those connections I love kept working their way into the story, and as the show kept subverting my expectations. There were several times where my wife and I would go, "Noooo! Don't tell us you're going to do that to us!" and then they didn't. AoS was different from your average monster-of-the-week espionage show (assuming those exist), and it had both humor and heart, so I was willing to forgive a few of the less-desirable plot points along the way. The first season ended on a very high note, which made the second season's incongruously serious tone, loss of focus on external connections and character development, overemphasis on the generically evil main villains (to the point where we started calling it Agents of Hydra), and insistence on doing exactly what you expect all the more unpleasant.

Agent Carter proved to be a more evenly enjoyable experience. My wife raves about how they nailed the time period and how Peggy Carter is a wonderful example of how to write good female characters. While I agree, I also found myself missing the superpowers and high-tech gadgetry that are so integral to the rest of the MCU, despite the best efforts of Howard Stark. I also don't feel like I have as deep of a sense of the characters as I'd like, but there's always next season.

As for Age of Ultron? Well. There's a story behind that one. It's called the Ultimate Marvel Marathon.

Previously, my longest movie event was approximately 20 hours of Harry Potter, eight films in all. Similarly, the longest I'd ever stayed awake continuously was 36 hours—rising early to sing at a summer church service, hopping a plane to France, not sleeping on the plane because I was a fool, and sightseeing for an entire day before hitting another pillow. I knew I had it in me to do this.

This, of course, being two days at the movie theater to see Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Thor 2: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and the premiere of Avengers: Age of Ultron, one after the other, with a break of 20 minutes or so between films. I lost track of how long I'd been there after the 30-hour mark. Between striking up conversations with strangers in line next to me, packing a change of clothes and a stick of deodorant in lieu of showering, and not sleeping until my body shut down on me during Snore 2: The Dark Theater, it was just like being at a comic book convention.

My brother-in-law and I got there a good five hours before the start of the marathon. You might think that's excessive, but when you're also reserving seating for your wife and your father, and when the alternative to waiting is risking front-row neck strain for 11 straight movies, queuing up early sounds downright sagely. The challenge here was that the marathon didn't start until the evening; despite my best efforts to sleep in, I had already been awake for several hours before arriving at the theater.

Every other crazy marathon I've done has started in the morning. Wake up, roll out of bed, Lord of the Rings Trilogy: Extended Edition. You don't start a marathon, let alone one of this magnitude, around the time most people are getting home from a full day of work. I can trick my body into thinking I'm staying up extra late if an all-day marathon spills over into the next day, but there's no way to disguise a 20-hour extension to the part of the evening reserved for warm milk and pajamas.

The odds were against me staying up the whole time, but smart planning and a lot of unexpected support kept me going.

What worked: Sleeping in beforehand. A trunk full of outside snacks, including muffins, Pop-Tarts, Clif bars, fruit snacks (shaped like sharks, because that's important), apple juice, assorted chips, and snack cakes. Meals from the snack bar at meal times, and snacks from the snack bar only when nothing else would do, and never the same thing twice. Drinking caffeine-free root beer throughout Day 1 and water throughout Day 2. Between movies, stepping outside for fresh air and sunshine (when available) and enforcing a mandatory bathroom break. Chatting with people. Cheering with the rest of the theater when something satisfyingly cool happened, or when Agent Phil "Everyone's Favorite Character" Coulson showed up. Having the theater manager and a local YouTube comedian interact with the audience every other movie, asking trivia questions and giving away posters.

What didn't work: This wasn't my living room.

I think about all the marathons I've done at home, from the aforementioned Harry Potter one to the 2012 Mega Man Megathon, and they were successful in large part because of the venue and structure. You can stand up, walk around, grab hot food or a drink refill, make a pit stop, change seats, and crack wise at the screen without worrying about bothering the people around you, tripping over things in the dark, getting caught waiting in line, or having to wait for the fryer to heat up. You can cut the break time between movies down to however long it takes you to swap out the discs after the credits are over (which would have trimmed entire hours off of this marathon). You can plan a proper breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert at the times you need them the most. There's something to be said about the energy of a movie theater crowd and the spectacle of seeing these films on the big screen, but the Ultimate Marvel Marathon almost felt like more of an endurance test than a marathon.

The entire first half of the marathon, I was fine. I was excited, well fed, making notes between films, and asking my family for a critical assessment after each film. (Age of Ultron notwithstanding, we'd seen them all before; amusingly, one of the other people in the theater was seeing all of these films for the first time!) There was a stretch during the wee hours of the morning, somewhere between Thor and Captain America, where I began to question how I was going to make it through another day after this, but when I stepped outside during the break to find that the sun had returned, simply knowing that it was time to wake up and start the day was good enough to keep me going.

Eating nothing but packaged snacks and concession stand food for two days has a way of making you reevaluate any aversion you ever had to vegetables. When everything available is fried, salty, sweet, or some combination thereof, you need to be a tactical genius to eat well enough to stay awake and feel good about it. On the plus side, I have now tried everything on the concession stand menu that ever piqued my interest, except (regrettably) the Oreo churros, so I need never gamble on untested movie food again. Spicy chicken is delicious.

As a side note, if you ever do a marathon like this one, plan your budget like you're spending the day at an amusement park.

In addition to food and drink, the concession stand was selling Marvel figurines; the largest drink cups had a lid with a divot on top where the figurine base would plug right in. As we waited in line, people were trading figurines like they were pogs on a playground. Iron Man, Thor, and Ultron were common sights, with the occasional Cap and Hulk, but there were rumors of the elusive Black Widow. The figurine packages were unmarked, but it wasn't long before people started realizing they could tell which figurine they had in their hands by pressing against the bag to determine the shape of the figurine inside. Those poor cashiers spent the next couple hours being asked to feel their packages.

I was less discriminating and took the first figurine I was given...which turned out to be none other than Black Widow. Very cool. Plugging her into my drink lid was a mistake; her glowy blue nightsticks almost poked my eye out every time I leaned in to take a sip from the straw.

There are plenty more stories to tell from the marathon, but two things I took away from the event were a greater appreciation of Tony Stark's character arc, and a sense of wonder at how so many movies from so many different directors and writers and actors could not only have such seamless continuity, but also maintain a consistently high standard of quality. Each and every one of those movies is at least a 3 out of 5 in my book, with even the weakest entries being no worse than "merely average." Eh, I suppose The Incredible Hulk is really more of a 2.5, but still. The MCU is a vast, rich place with some superbly developed characters and an ever-complexening (is that a word?) history. I was psyched to come back for more.

Then there was Ant-Man. Like practically everyone else who said, "...Ant-Man?", I was not terribly excited (and besides, if we're talking shrinky people, I prefer The Atom). I've read a bit of the earliest Avengers comics, so I had an idea of what I was in for...but I didn't expect to like it so much. A few story flaws, sure, but overall a very funny and exciting addition to the MCU.

Daredevil was a bit of a departure from...well, everything else in the MCU, not to mention everything I normally watch. Dark, both visually and tonally. Violent. Normal. In a world of superheroes, it's a show about lawyers and thugs and corruption. Well done? Most definitely. My wife and I are only five or six episodes in, but so far it's an intriguing and engrossing show. It's also emotionally exhausting to watch. And this is where I see my dedication to the MCU beginning to waver.

I watched a trailer for Jessica Jones. It looks great. It looks like something I won't enjoy. I think back to The Dark Knight, what an incredible piece of cinema it is, what great performances and cinematography it has, and how I really don't like it. I can recognize when something of good quality is not my style, and as the MCU continues to diversify, I'm going to see more and more films and TV shows I wouldn't choose to watch under normal circumstances. And considering it's taken more than a year to get through those few episodes of Daredevil, I predict it's the TV tie-ins that are going to be my downfall. I can sit through two hours of anotherThor movie, but I don't know if I can commit to 17 more hours of AoS if it's anything like the second season (which, based on the trailer I saw, seems all too likely).

Beyond that, the MCU has competition. Star Wars is back in full swing with the first installment in a new trilogy, two spinoff movies in the works, and countless more to come—and my wife and I are barely through the first season of The Clone Wars and haven't even started on Rebels. Star Trek has a new movie and TV series coming out next year; my expectations are low, but if the latter ends up being any good, it'll likely take priority over anything else I'm watching. At least I've given up on staying current with the DC Comics film and television universe, which strikes me as disorganized and unattached to the source material.

Still, I'm excited for what will be in theaters during Phase 3 of the MCU. Even if I can't keep up with the universe at home on the small screen, any excuse to get out to the big screen is usually a good one. And who knows? Maybe I'll have trained my body to go without sleep for three days straight the next time an Ultimate Marvel Marathon rolls around.

Following the release of the first official trailer for Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens, I made some predictions about the film. Having returned from the movie theater a few hours ago, it's time to see how I did.

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I'll throw in a few more lines here for good measure.

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PREDICTION: Han Solo dies. At the very least, someone you care about from the original trilogy will not survive to the end of this trilogy. Probably two or three characters, really. Maybe the droids.

RESULT: Bingo.PREDICTION: Copious callbacks to the original trilogy that straddle the line between reverence for the original trilogy and pandering to the fans who love anything that references the original trilogy.

RESULT: I was sure I'd get this one right, but I had no idea how right I'd be. If you take out all the sections that closely parallel anything in the original trilogy, you almost don't have a movie. If nobody told you the name of the planet, you'd swear Jakku was Tatooine. Starkiller Base is the Death Star carved into the planet Hoth. There's a lot of time spent running around wooded areas that look like they'd fit right in on Endor. The whole adventure starts with Stormtroopers chasing a droid with critical information across a desert. Somebody with no gunnery experience uses a turret to fend off TIE fighters. The Millennium Falcon flies through the guts of an Imperial vessel in a high-stakes action sequence. People use the Falcon's secret cargo compartment in the floor as a hiding place. There's a confrontation on a catwalk over a huge chasm. The inside of Maz Kanata's castle bears a striking resemblance to the Mos Eisley cantina, complete with one of the heroes chartering a ship out of there. The Rebels plot an assault from their tiny base and suffer heavy casualties in a major battle. The heroes go sneaking around an Imperial stronghold. One of the heroes gets grabbed by a tentacle monster. Need I go on?

The Force Awakens has the courtesy to do its homages respectfully, and everything familiar has a meaningful twist that keeps it from being a straight rehash of the other movies, but man alive. We tolerate it now because it's so well done, and because we've been craving a thoughtfully planned and superbly executed new Star Wars film since 1983 (or 1980, if you're one of those people). In time, I expect The Force Awakens will become the Mega Man 3 of Star Wars marathons—the one that's fine on its own, but a little tiresome when you realize how much of it you just saw.

PREDICTION: A sudden realization that the actors from the original trilogy are way older than everyone else in the movie.

RESULT: I am relieved to say that I mostly got this one wrong. There's a broader age range than I was expecting, with a good mix of middle-aged and older actors rounding out the cast of young'uns (heck, one of the characters is 1000 years old!), and the younger actors demonstrate a maturity I'm no longer accustomed to seeing from their demographic in the cinema. What could have been another case of "Look, Leonard Nimoy! Anybody remember him?" ended up being a graceful merger of old and new. I also credit the costumers and makeup artists, who captured that 1977 fashion aesthetic and updated it to look just contemporary enough not to feel dated—one look at Poe Dameron's hair, and it's like we were prepping for the Death Star trench run all over again. Everyone looks like they belong in the same universe.

However, I credit myself with a minor victory here. The first time you see BB-8 and R2-D2 together, the latter really looks like a relic of a bygone era of sci-fi. It's less pronounced once Artoo is moving around again, but I've never seen everyone's favorite astromech droid look so much like a quaint old prop made from a trash can.

RESULT: I'll admit that I'm not well-versed enough in the Expanded Universe to catch everything that might've been in the movie, but Han and Leia having a Force-sensitive child, Luke training a new generation of Jedi, and Stormtroopers being used by a new regime in the wake of the Empire's collapse are all part of the old Expanded Universe. I was kinda hoping for Mara Jade, but there's still time.

PREDICTION: An earnest attempt to convince you that the prequels aren't all bad.

RESULT: Well, you can't win 'em all. I found no trace of the prequels here, aside from the marketplace scene toward the beginning reminding me a bit of Phantom Menace. Though, to be fair, all that time spent reimagining parts of the original trilogy left no room for an attempt to convince us that the prequels aren't all bad.

PREDICTION: The heroes get captured, because that's pretty much a requirement nowadays.

RESULT: Yep. Poe, BB-8, Rey, Finn, Han, and Chewie each get captured by the end of the movie (and Rey almost gets captured once as well). For bonus points, the heroes turn the tables and capture Captain Phasma to shut down the shield generator (oh, and there's another original trilogy parallel—somebody's gotta shut down a shield generator). Fortunately, being captured is usually an inconvenience that serves as an opportunity for character development, and it never sidetracks the heroes on some elaborate escape plan that interferes with the main plot (I'm looking at you, Doctor Who).

PREDICTION: Despite starring a woman and a person of color, the film will still manage to screw up equal representation.

RESULT: I am so happy I was wrong about this one. The film goes out of its way to throw gender, race, and age conventions aside and give every character an equal chance to shine. Hollywood has needed a big-name movie to remind the general public that a woman can be strong without being an indestructible man-hating machine, a black man can hold a leading role in a film that makes no mention of skin color, and people over age 70 can be in good enough shape to be action heroes.

PREDICTION: The soccer-ball droid will have more charisma and depth than at least one of the other main characters.

RESULT: I would argue that BB-8 has a smidge more depth and charisma than Poe, but that's probably because the former has more screen time. As suggested above, the characters feel like people, and for once, the novelty character doesn't steal the spotlight from everyone else.

PREDICTION: LENS FLA—oh, wait; wrong film. A moment where you could swear you're watching one of the Star Trek reboot movies.

RESULT:The Force Awakens is a film by people who are clearly passionate about Star Wars and who also know what they're doing. Although the film never once reminded me of the Star Trek reboot movies, it gave me a glimpse of what Star Trek 2009 could have been like with different writers and a J.J. Abrams who had grown up loving the franchise. All that near-rehashing of old material I mentioned above? That's exactly what you do with a reboot. Star Trek could have been the homage melange with heartwarming character beats, and Star Wars could have been the brand-new story with a few references to old material here and there, and everyone would have been happy. I might've gotten this prediction wrong, but the result is eye-opening.

PREDICTION: No matter what the movie is like, the fan community will not be able to agree on whether it's any good.

RESULT: It's still too early to say too much on this point, but so far it looks like I'm right on the mark. A little bit of Googling reveals that the film is indeed polarizing among at least a small sample of fans, with most loving it and a few hating it—little or no middle ground.

For my part, I enjoyed the movie. More than I expected. Despite a small twinge when I saw his name pop up in the credits, I'm proud of J.J. Abrams—and everyone involved—for doing Star Wars justice. The film isn't perfect, and I'll need to rewatch it after this trilogy is complete to draw final conclusions about it, but it does a lot of things well that Star Wars—and Hollywood—have needed to do well for a long time. It is my hope that The Force Awakens will be a stepping stone that helps move us beyond squabbling over casting choices and directorial decisions and puts our focus as fans and filmmakers back on telling and enjoying a good story in that galaxy far, far away.

You're going to laugh when I tell you I'm looking forward to this movie:

Let me get this obligatory link out of the way, which should explain to anyone new to this blog why they're inexplicably laughing right now. In short: I've been opposed to rebooting the Star Trek franchise from the beginning, and the last two movies in the new continuity have done nothing to convince me that this was a good idea. What I like about the trailer for Star Trek Beyond is that it doesn't even pretend to be Star Trek anymore, and that's really all it takes to get me to like this reboot.

At this point, I'm a little numb to the flaws of the reboot universe, because I've moved past trying to rationalize it as canon. It isn't canon. If you claim your reboot is an alternate timeline, then I expect to see an identical universe up to the point where the timelines divide, and I expect an alternate version of events that follows logically from whatever changed history. Star Trek 2009 failed to deliver on both those points. Star Trek Into Darkness added insult to injury by remaking Wrath of Khan, as though the whole point of throwing away 50 years of continuity was to try to improve on the one movie that basically any Trek fan will tell you doesn't need any improvement. On their own, these two films are flawed but highly enjoyable sci-fi action flicks, but they have no business masquerading as an alternate timeline. Paying lip service to the Star Trek name does not make one worthy of it.

Star Trek Beyond seems to acknowledge that, or at least the trailer does. Advertisements for the last two movies seemed to hint at the kinds of philosophical questions and moral choices that characterize Star Trek, providing a false hope that these films would be as thought-provoking and introspective amidst all the action as you would expect of Star Trek. This new trailer does no such thing. The transporter looks cool. The aliens look weird. Stuff blows up real good. There's action and comedy and suspense, but nothing too emotional or thinky, and the characters just happen to wear Starfleet uniforms. The music is loud and raucous with vocals, in contrast with the dynamic orchestral music that usually accompanies a Star Trek trailer. Heck, you'd think the movie's name was Beyond if it weren't for the tiny Star Trek logo fading in above it at the very end.

At the same time, there are little signs that this film might be a step in the right direction for the reboot. The uniforms have been updated and appear more like uniforms than costumes; the actors look the part even more than before. There are aliens we've never seen before, meaning we may finally get to watch the crew make first contact and develop relationships with a new species or two. Character interactions seem organic, like these characters have real personalities and aren't simply there to move the plot forward. The dialogue sounds like some artistic thought went into it, a refreshing change from the platitudes and clumsy references of the last two movies. It appears that the female alien may be one of the main characters, and she goes the entire trailer without screaming or disrobing. I'm pretty sure they're going to destroy the Enterprise in this one, if the swarms of whatevers smashing through the hull are any indication, which hopefully means the next movie will feature a ship that doesn't look like a balloon animal. The fact that there are swarms of whatevers instead of another huge warship gives me hope that the primary conflict of this film won't revolve around trying to outgun yet another impossibly strong opponent.

It's nice to look forward to Star Trek again, even—or especially—if the chances of it being actual Star Trek are slim to none.

Long story short, 2015 has not been the greatest year for me. November was the first month in a very long time where I was both pleased with how things were going and looking hopefully to the future. I'm glad to be able to share with you some of the high points of this past month.

Hey, I wrote some things! I'm most pleased with the final entry—after looking back on a couple years of writing for this blog, I came to realize how constantly negative I've been, even after my one friend's comment about my "general bitterness commentary" caused me to reexamine my writing. I'm making a conscious effort now to be more positive in my writing. I miss being fun and friendly and optimistic, and it's within my power to be like that again. I still reserve the right to complain from time to time, but I'll try to do it with a smile.

Things are ramping up behind the scenes at GameCola, and most of my time has been spent updating our staff wiki and drafting up internal e-mail correspondence, despite the five articles below making me look like I did anything of substance on the site itself. I'm also getting back into the habit of writing full reviews, which you'll see in next month's Retrospective; I hadn't realized how much I've needed my writing fix, and churning out fluff posts about archival videos has not been meeting that need. This has been a very productive year for me at GameCola, but I've fled too far from the beefy posts that energize me in an attempt to free up time to work on other projects that energize me in different ways. Time to get things back in balance.

More old podcasts, the conclusion of a livestream series that sparked one of the posts mentioned above, and one of my favorite livestreams to date. I feel like I've finally hit my stride with livestreaming, and I've got a couple ideas for easy-ish prerecorded videos that I may bust out during my December vacation time. We'll see.

I've reached a point in my gaming career that looks an awful lot like where I started. When I first got into gaming, it was all about having fun. If I liked a game, I kept playing it; If I didn't like a game, I stopped playing it. Around the time I signed up for The Backloggery some six years ago, gaming was only partially about having fun; it was also about the cultural experience of these games that other people enjoyed, and about finally getting around to all the games I had bought or been given that were collecting dust on a shelf.

A couple years ago, I began to move past my compulsion to play every game, even the bad ones, to 100% completion. Over the last couple months, I've moved past my compulsion to play the bad ones to any kind of completion. Life's short, and there are things I'd rather do with it than subject myself to completely avoidable tedium and frustration. I'm also acknowledging that there are some genres and series I might enjoy if I gave them a chance, but require too much of a time investment to determine whether they're worthwhile for me. From now on, I'm watching playthroughs on YouTube of anything that seems worth experiencing but not worth however many weeks or months of my life to conquer on my own.

Don't be offended if a game you got me or a game you love ends up on my "Removed" list. All that means is that I gave it a chance and I'm not eager to go back to it, same as any movie or restaurant or anything I take a chance on. Unless we're talking about Cruis'n USA, in which case I wouldn't mind keeping it on my backlog if the game cartridge weren't only useful as a paperweight [glares in the direction of the PAX East 2010 vendor who assured him every game was tested to work].